haste of the departed guests, and the laziness or indifference of their immediate followers. The very pictures used at the coronation of Napoleon were in the sacristy of the cathedral at Milan. The gardens at this villa were inconsiderable; they were English à la Parisienne, as Mr. Simond says; but the park was ten miles in circumference, and filled with game. Beauharnois, like his great stepfather, was fond of the chace-that is, of shooting, and hunting, or coursing, in a very unsportsmanlike style-very different from that in which our Duke used to follow his foxhounds in the Spanish Peninsula. It is possible there was some little affectation in this attachment to what has long been a royal amusement, particularly of the Bourbons, to whose habits Napoleon was not unwilling to be thought a successor, as well as to their throne. He used, so says an authority not quite incontestable in such matters,* frequently to balance himself on one leg whilst overlooking the card-parties at his court circles— a notorious trick of the two last legitimate sovereigns of France. This was recorded of him in the latter days of his glory—when he was king of kings-when it was reckoned a sign of bad taste and disaffected politics to allude in any way to death, or any of the disastrous chances of humanity, as being common to Napoleon with the rest of the species-and when Geneviève was very nearly compelled to give up the patronage of Paris * Madame de Staël, Dix Ans d'Exile.' to the emperor's own saint, Napoleon. It was no wonder that the intellect of this marvellous man was not quite proof against the intoxication of the Tuileries; and it now seems pretty certain that it gave way during the dreadful reverses of the Russian campaign. The now celebrated Mr. Beyle told us, at Milan, that he saw Napoleon more than once put the signature "Pompey" to an official paper, and ventured to notice the mistake to his imperial master, who rectified it without any remark.* * This gentleman in those days was called De Beyle, and afterwards called himself, for authorship, Count Stendhall. We were told that he was one of the intendants "de la mobilière de la couronne," and acted occasionally as secretary to Napoleon during the Russian campaign. His anecdote is somewhat confirmed by what M. Thiers has narrated, in his 14th volume Du Consulat,' &c., of Napoleon's frequent mention of Pultowa during his retreat from Moscow. I confess I was not aware of the great celebrity of Mr. Beyle until this year (1856), when, opening a clever article in the Edinburgh Review' for January, I awoke and "found him famous." My previous acquaintance with him as an author, I ought to be ashamed to say, was confined to a quotation from his 'History of Painting in Italy,' which I found in Moore's Life of Byron' (p. 47, vol. i. quarto), and which contains an account of what passed at a dinner given by Di Breme to Lord Byron, Monti, and others, at Milan, in 1816. I was one of the guests on that occasion, and can only repeat the old remark, Although all these things happened in my time, I never heard of them." The dinner was a formal banquet, the attendants being in state liveries; and the whole ceremony-for a ceremony it was-reminded me very much of Rousseau's account of the grand Turinese entertainments, at which he assisted in the capacity of footman. I think that if any one had repeated nearly the whole canto of a poem at table, I must have recollected it. Yet Mr. Beyle says that Monti did repeat the first canto-almost the whole of it-of his own 'Mascheroniana,' "vaincu par les acclamations des auditeurs," on that occasion; and, |